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Trap is a subgenre of hip hop that emerged from the Southern United States, defined by half-time grooves, ominous minor-key melodies, and the heavy use of 808 sub-bass. The style is characterized by rapid, syncopated hi-hat rolls, crisp rimshot/clap on the backbeat, and cinematic textures that convey tension and grit. Lyrically, it centers on street economies, survival, ambition, and introspection, with ad-libs used as percussive punctuation. Production is typically minimal but hard-hitting: layered 808s, sparse piano or bell motifs, dark pads, and occasional orchestral or choir samples. Vocals range from gravelly, staccato deliveries to melodic, Auto-Tuned flows, often using triplet cadences.

Rap metal fuses the rhythmic vocal delivery and sampling culture of hip hop with the high-gain guitars, driving bass, and aggressive drums of metal. Typical tracks feature rapped verses, shouted or sung hooks, syncopated, groove-heavy riffs, and punchy backbeats that prioritize head-nodding momentum as much as mosh-friendly impact. Down-tuned guitars, palm-muted chugs, and start–stop rhythms are common, often paired with DJ cuts, samples, or electronics. Lyrically, the style ranges from social and political commentary to braggadocio and cathartic personal themes. The genre overlaps with rap rock and nu metal, but it leans more toward metal riffing and heaviness than rap rock, and centers rap as a primary vocal approach rather than a secondary color.

Production music (also called library or stock music) is music created specifically for licensing in film, television, radio, advertising, games, and online media rather than for retail release. It is organized in catalogues by mood, style, tempo, and usage, making it quick for editors and producers to find suitable cues. Stylistically, production music is highly diverse. It spans orchestral and light music traditions, jazz, lounge, rock, funk, and contemporary electronic idioms, but is unified by functional design: clear edit points, modular structure, alternate mixes, and versions tailored to typical broadcast durations. Successful cues balance memorability with unobtrusiveness so they can support narrative, voice-over, and sound design without distracting from them.

Score refers to original music composed to synchronize with and shape the narrative of visual media—primarily film, television, and, later, video games. Unlike a “soundtrack,” which often compiles pre-existing songs, a score is written to picture, uses timing cues to support storytelling beat by beat, and develops recurring themes (leitmotifs) for characters, settings, or ideas. The palette ranges from late‑Romantic orchestration and modernist harmony to jazz idioms, electronic sound design, and global instrumentation. Hallmarks include thematic development, hit points, motif variation, orchestration color, and a close relationship with sound effects and dialogue in the final mix.

Western classical is the notated art-music tradition that developed in Europe from medieval Christian chant into the large-scale secular and sacred forms of the Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and modern eras. It is characterized by staff notation, evolving systems of modality and tonality, and forms such as symphony, sonata, concerto, mass, opera, and chamber music. Across its history, Western classical established an extensive theory of harmony and counterpoint, refined orchestration across strings, winds, brass, and percussion, and cultivated performance practices from a cappella chant to full symphonic and operatic forces. Its repertoire, pedagogy, and institutions (conservatories, orchestras, opera houses) made it a global reference point for compositional craft and instrumental technique.

Contemporary classical is the broad field of Western art music created after World War II. It embraces an array of aesthetics—from serialism and indeterminacy to minimalism, spectralism, electroacoustic practices, and post‑tonal lyricism—while retaining a concern for notated composition and timbral innovation. Unlike the unified styles of earlier eras, contemporary classical is pluralistic. Composers freely mix acoustic and electronic sound, expand instrumental techniques, adopt non‑Western tuning and rhythm, and explore new forms, from process-based structures to open and graphic scores. The result is a music that can be rigorously complex or radically simple, technologically experimental or intimately acoustic, yet consistently focused on extending how musical time, timbre, and form can be shaped.

Mallsoft is a subgenre of vaporwave that magnifies the sound and ambience of shopping malls, corporate lobbies, food courts, and retail soundtracks. It often loops, slows, and filters archival easy listening, smooth jazz, or library music to simulate the dreamlike experience of wandering an empty mall. The style foregrounds spatial illusion and consumer nostalgia: wide reverbs, distant PA announcements, and fountain or escalator noise create a glossy yet uncanny, hyper-commercial environment. Rather than rhythmic drive, mallsoft prioritizes mood, texture, and the sensation of endless browsing in a perpetually pristine retail space.

Lounge is a mid-20th-century style of easy listening that blends jazz harmony, light orchestral arranging, and Latin/exotica rhythms into suave, unobtrusive music designed for relaxation and sophisticated ambience. Typically associated with cocktail lounges, tiki bars, and the hi‑fi/stereo boom, it emphasizes lush strings, vibraphone and marimba timbres, brushed drums, gentle horns, and occasional wordless vocals or whistling. Melodies are memorable yet restrained, arrangements are polished, and production often highlights spacious reverbs and playful stereo effects. A 1990s revival reframed lounge as retro‑chic, intersecting with downtempo, chillout, and nu‑jazz while preserving its trademark mood: warm, cosmopolitan, and stylishly relaxed.

Smooth jazz is a radio-friendly offshoot of jazz that blends the harmonic vocabulary and improvisational flavor of jazz with the gentle grooves of R&B, pop, and easy listening. It emphasizes melody, polished production, and laid‑back rhythms over extended improvisation or complex swing feels. Typically mid‑tempo and sleek, smooth jazz favors clean electric guitar, soprano or alto saxophone leads, warm electric piano (Rhodes) and synth pads, and a tight, understated rhythm section. The result is music designed for relaxed listening—romantic, urbane, and sophisticated—yet still rooted in jazz harmony and phrasing.

Barber beats is a vaporwave-adjacent microgenre characterized by slowed, loop-based instrumentals built from lounge, smooth jazz, and easy-listening samples. Producers emphasize a soft, cushiony drum groove, heavy time-stretching, subtle pitch shifting, and warm, dusty textures that evoke waiting rooms, lobbies, and late‑night cable atmospheres. Typical tracks sit around 85–105 BPM, lean on mellow chords, brushed snares or gentle drum-machine kits, and favor tasteful filtering, vinyl crackle, and roomy reverb. The result is hypnotic, low-stakes background music that feels both nostalgic and liminal—less overtly ironic than classic vaporwave, yet still rooted in sample-based moodcraft and retro corporate aesthetics.

Slushwave is a vaporwave-derived microgenre that stretches samples and synth textures into foggy, glacial soundscapes. Tracks are typically very slow, drenched in reverb and delay, and layered with tape hiss, vinyl crackle, and other lo‑fi artifacts to create an enveloping, dreamlike ambience. Rather than the chopped, ironic collage associated with early vaporwave, slushwave favors long pads, smeared chords, and minimal or absent percussion. When drums appear, they are subdued and distant. The genre often draws from new age, city pop, smooth jazz, and soft adult‑contemporary sources, pitching them down and elongating them into warm, melancholic drones that evoke late‑night memory, urban solitude, and liminal spaces.